Four-shaft loom

Weaving is a complicated business; so much so that you could plausibly argue that computer programming was invented as a by-product of encoding weaving designs. This design, by architect, researcher, and maker Asli Aydin Aksan, is a more complicated build than some other homemade looms we’ve seen, but the brilliance of that is that it enables the user to create more complex patterns than you would if you were using a simpler loom.

What we love about this is that it’s open-source, so anyone can learn from, copy, and modify the design to suit their work. And it’s not a toy; Asli’s woven real, useful bits of fabric with it. It’s also ideal for anyone who doesn’t have a Victorian cloth mill in which to store it: in use, the loom takes up 600(L) × 440(W) × 310(H) mm, and folds away to 202(L) × 440(W) × 310(H) mm.